


A game of hearts

by WahlBuilder



Category: The Technomancer (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, Card Games, Ian is a little bit oblivious, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 20:39:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17107748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Their regular game nights have been turning tense, and at last Viktor and Anton the final confrontation over cards.





	A game of hearts

**Author's Note:**

> Hugs and kisses to Salmaka who suggested card games between the four!

Ian was starting to think that insisting on this last card night of the year had been unwise: tensions between Director Watcher and the Russian had been growing as of late. The ground was shaking because of it. Just a week ago, a BOI raid on one of Anton’s legal establishments, made on a very much made-up pretense — and before that, more raids, detainments, arrests. It’s not that the BOI men, Viktor’s men, had not been suffering at Anton’s hands either: the Russian retaliated brutally, cruelly.

But these card nights, they had maintained civility, more or less. Polite, growing colder and colder with each passing week.

A month ago, during their previous night, Ian had been certain the two adversaries would keep civil with ease. Ian had even hoped the nights would help them reconcile, sort things out. All this mess didn’t feel as merely the BOI doing their duty and the Vory doing what they had been assembled for.

It felt _personal_.

Ian was sure Dandolo knew something. Peacock, watching the aloof director and the pale Russian exchange tense curt sentences, was growing more and more thoughtful, a hard set about his usually smiling deceptive mouth. He had stopped wearing his ridiculous fur coat to their card nights, discarding it in favor of a light tunic — that had ample space for concealed weapons. He was a known knife master and a decent shot.

“We had to reschedule the night,” the director noted to the general audience.

Bodyguards and any other companions were not permitted here: what the police colonel, the BOI director, and two of the most powerful criminal bosses in the States discussed here was nobody else’s business.

Ian, sitting to the left of Anton, had not missed how Anton’s hand on the cards twitched, moved to the glass standing on the table, with rocks — Ian’s gift — dark and wet in it, but then returned to the cards. “I was busy,” the Russian grunted. His eyes, hooded with shadow, were staring right at Viktor.

Ian suppressed the urge to swallow, or to finish his drink. He felt that he needed his head clear. They were younger than him, all three of them, and he wanted to bang Viktor and Anton’s heads together and tell them to sort themselves out before the city drowned in blood.

Throughout the years they had achieved a good, if imperfect, balance. They had worked hard, made concessions, sacrifices. Peacock (only strangers called him “Nomad” these days) and the Russian had their own territories, and they helped to keep the peace on the streets — while both Ian and Viktor overlooked some of their activities. Anton’s legal venues provided immigrants with work and money and food and a place to live, and Dandolo had spread his wing over those who had been devastated by war here.

Ian could have said that the arrangement went against his principles… But he swore to protect and serve — the people, not politicians, not rich industrialists, not laws which were made by flawed people and were flawed, too.

He could have said that the arrangement went against Viktor’s principles — but Viktor’s principles were a mystery to Ian, if the man even had them at all.

And now, the hard-built balance had been unraveling. And Ian didn’t understand why.

Viktor glanced over his cards at Anton, then back at his cards (Ian regretted that they had let Anton and Viktor sit opposite each other). “With yet another of your schemes? What is it this time? Importing slave labor? Cutting on production costs by using cheaper, dangerous materials?”

Anton slapped his cards on the table, rising from his seat. “I would _never_ do that, and you _know_ it.”

Ian reached to him. “Anton—”

“There is an end,” Viktor said from his seat — he had a way of saying things without raising his voice that, nevertheless, cut everyone else short, “to all things, Mr. Rogue. Including your luck and my patronage.”

Anton planted his hands on the table and leaned over it to Viktor. Ian glanced at Dandolo, but Peacock was looking at Anton, a contemplative expression on his face.

“I did well,” Anton hissed, “before you, and I would do well after you. I don’t need your ‘patronage’.”

Viktor looked over his cards again and now he didn’t look back at them. “You admit to being aided by luck, however?”

“Shove your luck into—”

Ian jumped to his feet just as Dandolo did, though holding Anton back was no small feat. The table screeched as Anton’s struggles pushed it forward, pressing into Viktor. Viktor grimaced, put his cards down carefully, pushed his chair back, into the shadow, away from the small circle of light of the table lamp.

“I think,” Viktor said, his voice perfectly neutral — and Anton nearly tore free of Ian’s and Dandolo’s arms, “that this night has come to a close, gentlemen. As has our arrangement for future nights.”

Anton suddenly stopped struggling — and Ian looked at him, because that was much worse.

The room was quite warm — but Anton, crossing his arms on his chest, radiated cold of a thousand winters. He was very pale. “You want to test luck? All right. Let us do it. One more game.”

Viktor rubbed his brow. “I am quite tired, Mr. Rogue, and I have work early in the morning.”

Anton huffed. “Yet another raid on an innocent corner shop?”

Viktor stopped rubbing his brow, and his eyes flickered, nearly like those of a cat noticing a prey. “Your establishments are never innocent, Mr. Rogue.” He straightened up. He was a tall, imposing man, more so from the way he held himself than body shape. Ian had seen him in a fight, Viktor could bring a man down without weapons, but he wasn’t _broad_. But his back was straight and his chin tilted up, and he held his hands behind his back — a conqueror, a general — even if his army was far away. “What are the stakes?”

Anton smiled. “My whole empire.”

That, Ian noted, surprised Viktor: the director’s lips twitched as though he wanted to say something, but then pressed tight.

“If you win,” Anton continued, “I will renounce it all. _Dismantle_ it all: everything I’ve fought for, everything I’ve built.”

Viktor swallowed, but if anything, his pose became even more rigid, his chin tilted that little half-inch up. “And if _you_ win?”

Anton’s smile grew wider.

Back in the trenches, Ian had seen men smile the exact same smile — before gripping a grenade and running towards a hulking monster of a tank.

Viktor narrowed his eyes. “I accept.”

Ian reached for the Russian. “Antek, now wait a moment—

“Let them play,” Dandolo spoke.

Both the director and the Russian turned to him. Dandolo was opening new packs of cards, one, two, three, four… “But if it’s about luck,” he flicked green eyes at Anton, then at Viktor, “play baccarat. Do you know it, Dire—”

“I know it, Mr. Paon,” Viktor said, urging him with a nod. “That is… sensible.”

Ian only heard of the game. It was rather fast and simple — and based on pure luck, in most instances.

“And to make it nice and quick,” Dandolo said, opening the last pack, “let it be with only one player.”

Anton looked at Viktor. “You.”

Viktor nodded again. He was not looking away from Anton. “Shuffle, Mr. Paon. And wash it, please.”

Dandolo didn’t smile. He removed a few cards from the decks, and then Ian was mesmerized, as usual, by Dandolo’s shuffling, making cards do things that seemed entirely against laws of nature, flying in arcs and cascading from one hand to another. “To remind the rules to everyone here—” which Ian took as referring to himself “—faces and tens give zero points, deuces to nines their corresponding value, aces are _uno_. Anton will let our good colonel take two cards, face-up,” he paused, looking at Viktor, and Viktor nodded, “the values are added up. If they are more than nine, the rightmost digit of the sum value is taken. If they are nine or eight, Colonel Watcher wins. If the the sum is lower than eight, the colonel takes another card—”

“And then, if the sum _isn’t_ nine or eight with three cards,” Anton interrupted — he was looking at Viktor, “the colonel loses. To speed up the process. The colonel has _work_ first thing in the morning.”

Viktor nodded again.

Ian sighed, moved away, trying to calculate the damage this foolishness would bring in either case. Collapse of the city — or… whatever Anton would demand as his prize, it didn’t bode well for the director. Or anyone, for that matter. Viktor was a proud man.

Dandolo finished shuffling, discarded a few cards off the top, then held the combined deck between the two men.

Anton looked down and took the first two cards, then handed them over to Viktor.

Ian leaned forward just as Viktor turned them over.

A crimson suicide king and an eight of diamonds.

Ian’s breath caught.

Viktor lowered the cards on the table, locking his eyes with Anton. “Back away, Tosha,” he said quietly.

 _Tosha?_ Ian glanced over at Dandolo. Peacock shook his head slightly. The two rivals seemed to not notice anything around them.

Something was going on here, something beyond cards and stupid pride and this lunatic game. Ian was quietly starting the body count.

“Ни за что, Витя.” Anton snapped, “Take the card!” He grabbed the deck from Dandolo’s hands and thrust it to Viktor.

Viktor reached up, his hand hovered, then took the first card off, towards himself. He held it away from others, his face betraying even less than usual. His gaze flicked from Anton to the card. To Anton again.

Then he lowered the card and said in a perfectly manufactured neutral tone, “You win.”

Anton’s face, in contrast to Viktor’s, fell — but only for a moment, and then Anton put on a mask Ian knew well, and hated. And that mask split into a grin that was not of the man heading to his death, but rather a man planning to administer death with great pleasure.

Anton dropped the deck, the cards rustling, prowled around the table, closer, closer to Viktor. His hand shot up and fingers with often-broken knuckles curled over Viktor’s dark tie, pulling its end from under Viktor’s vest, then gripping it tighter and pulling _down_ until Viktor had no choice but to bend — or to choke.

Anton’s chest was rising and falling rapidly, and he rasped, mouth close to Viktor’s lips, _“I own you now.”_

Viktor didn’t answer, but his gaze flicked down and up Anton’s face.

Anton pulled him into the darkness, and only when the door closed after them had Ian realized he had to breathe.

He inhaled deeply — and coughed, choking on the thick cherry smoke from the cigarette Dandolo had lit.

Peacock didn’t seem worried at all. He moved around the table, collecting the deck, moving forgotten glasses away.

Ian leaned on the back of his seat, feeling like he needed a drink, to wash it all away like a bad dream — only, it was going to get worse, wasn’t it.

“It’s going to get better, _finally_ ,” Dandolo murmured, the cigarette clenched in his teeth.

Ian shook his head. It made no sense at all. Though perhaps the chaos would suit Dandolo’s Noctians, but the city would be destroyed. “We can’t handle it, Dandolo. My forces won’t be able to—”

Dandolo held up a card, removing the cigarette and tapping the ash away on the ashtray.

The third card Viktor had taken.

The mark in the middle like a spot of blood.

An ace of hearts.

**Author's Note:**

> Will I ever get tired of writing Vitya and Tosha being terrible, wonderful for each other? Probably not.


End file.
